Sign the Petition to

Faroe Islands. Prime Minister kaj Leo Holm Johannesen

To: The Faroe Islands Prime Minister Kaj Leo Johannesen

During
the summer months, inhabitants of the Faroe Islands - a group of
islands under the sovereignty of Denmark, situated roughly halfway
between Norway and Iceland - celebrate a cultural tradition called the
grindadrap or the "grind," literally translated as “whale murder.”

Faroese
whalers perpetrate the traditional butchery by surrounding entire pods
of whales and dolphins with motor boats and driving them into the
shallows -- where other residents are waiting for the kill. Disoriented,
exhausted and terrified, the animals are forced to beach themselves.
Reveling islanders use blunt-ended metal hooks to spear the whales’
blowholes and drag them up the beach. Then they murder the helpless
animals with a knife cut to their major blood vessels.

Prime
Minister Johannesen, it is already common knowledge that whales and
dolphins are highly intelligent, socially complex, and peaceful marine
mammals. Since 1982, the Convention on the Conservation of European
Wildlife and Natural Habitats has listed Cetaceans in Appendix II (List
of strictly protected species) and in Appendix III (List of protected
species).

There is no justification for killing them.

Each
islander receives only about 22 pounds of whale meat a year for the
slaughter to be convincingly rationalized as aboriginal subsistence
whaling. Alarming levels of mercury, cadmium and other contaminants are
found in whale and dolphin meat so it cannot pass EU health standards
for human food, consequently, it cannot be exported. Much of the meat is
dumped and left to rot.

The grindadrap continues exclusively for the sake of tradition.

As
the Prime Minister of the Faroe Islands, you have the power to put an
end to this barbaric tradition once and for all. We appeal to you to
recognize the mounting international condemnation of the grindadrap, and
to prohibit the slaughtering of dolphins and whales in the Faroe
Islands.